“Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” often called the Black National Anthem, was sung again this year during pre-game festivities at the Super Bowl. African American singer Andra Day received a rousing ovation at the stadium. However, many people asked why that song. Many others went berserk. This “tradition (?)” was begun several years ago following … [Read more…]
Upholding the law of the land “would be an affirmation of the vitality of our wounded democracy,” eminent historian Eric Foner wrote in the Washington Post six days after the riotous part of the Donald-Trump-led insurrection on January 6, 2021. Trump has wounded our democracy by breaking some of the laws of the land, and … [Read more…]
Jesse Ernest Wilkins, Jr. is often described as one of America’s most important contemporary mathematicians. When he finished his Ph.D. at 19, he was hailed by the national press as a “negro genius.” Wilkins (1923-2011) was a prominent African American mathematician and physicist who worked at the University of Chicago Met Lab during the Manhattan … [Read more…]
I saw the movie Oppenheimer recently, and it reminded me that African American scientists worked on that project to build the atomic bomb, and I knew two of them. This project, called the Manhattan Project, operated at several locations across the country, working on different parts of the project. Most African Americans worked in the … [Read more…]
Martin Luther King is often misremembered–so much that we celebrate fictional pablum, not the real MLK. Politicians and others who oppose the socio-political arguments of Bernie Sanders are essentially opposing Martin Luther King. Senator Bernie Sanders, probably the best known democratic socialist today, is really being true to the legacy of MLK. At the time … [Read more…]
President Biden can run on his record as well as against Trump and the Republicans’ authoritarianism. The economy has done quite well during his years in office. Biden’s presence boosted the economy. For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in December that the U.S. economy added 199,000 jobs in November of 2023, and the … [Read more…]
Over three-fourths of so-called Evangelical Christians voted for Trump in 2016. A notable fact that year was that exit polls showed about 80 percent of White Evangelical Christians supported Trump despite his unfamiliarity with the Bible, his divorces, his vulgar rhetoric, his association with porn stars, and his attacks on nonwhite people around the world. … [Read more…]
Gun violence is a public health crisis, says the American Public Health Association. The burden of gun violence in the United States vastly outpaces that in comparable countries: Gun violence affects people of all ages and races in the U.S. but has a disproportionate impact on young adults, males, and racial/ethnic minorities: Guns are a … [Read more…]
I have often said that I owe George W. Bush an apology. I was very critical of him as he appeared to have so few of the intellectual tools needed to be president of the United States. And then Trump came along—with so few of these tools he made Bush seem like a great leader, … [Read more…]
Many citizens are trying to process Trump’s authoritarian plans and those of his allies. Meanwhile, a cornerstone of democracy, the right to vote, is once again being snatched from under our feet. In 1870, Congress passed the 15th Amendment, which provided Blacks with the constitutional right to vote. But conservatives effectively blocked that right for … [Read more…]